That was 30+ years down the technology-evolution timeline after de Forest.
And when it comes to solid state amplifiers-the usual kind-does anyone prefer the state of the (germanium) art circa early 1960s to modern silicon class-AB designs? I doubt it.
Now, decades into its own development, class-D amplification seems to have sea legs, even in the audiophile world. Interesting fact: The class-D amplifier was invented and named in the 1950s by the man who had already invented pulsecode modulation for signal transmission, Englishman Alec Reeves. The first commercial class-D amp was a 2.5W kit from Sinclair Radionics of England, introduced in 1965 and followed the next year with a 20W second-generation model. Sinclair was eventually better known for pocket calculators.
The modern class-D amplifier, built into an integrated circuit, debuted in 1996 with the Tripath "Class-T" chips. Since then, there has been a steady march forward. Today, most "civilian" amplifiers in things like TV soundbars, "smart speakers," Bluetooth-connected portable speakers, nonfancy automobile sound systems, flat-screen TVs, and the like are commodity-priced class-D "amplifier bricks." They are small, efficient, cool-running, and cheap.
Class-D amplifiers started to appear in audiophile-grade components about 10 years ago, although there were earlier, outlier examples. In the pro-audio world, they have been around a bit longer, often but not always inside powered monitor speakers. Class-D amplification is ubiquitous in the modern sound-reinforcement world, that is, for live-concert sound.
This story is from the July 2023 edition of Stereophile.
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This story is from the July 2023 edition of Stereophile.
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